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| Bottom Line: Micromanagement fanatics may dig this title, but ultimately too much time is spent maintaining your empire as opposed to having fun. |
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Background
After failing to find a really good synopsis of the Three Kingdoms period (Including the manual and documentation of the game itself, I elected to go ahead and whip up a brief summary of my own that hopefully helps to clear up some of the questions I had during the game. Part of the problem with the documentation of Chinese history is that it's mostly written and translated by the Chinese, so part of it gets lost in the translation. As a general disclaimer, I have not studied Chinese history and therefore I may certainly be misunderstanding or reading into things more than I should, so take the following summary with a grain of salt.
As mentioned before, the Three Kingdoms period (180 AD to 280 AD) encompasses the attempted rise to power of three generals: Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan. There aren't exactly any lines to be drawn here as to who was good and who was evil - All three men were highly ambitious and wished to unite the states, yet each had their own loyalties and interests to serve. China at the time was in a highly vulnerable state, as the many wars preceding this period had decimated the lands and population of China, and the people were in desperation. At the end of the Han Dynasty, the last emperor had ordered his lands split up into separate states and ruled by regional governors, in that smaller management of the countries might bring them back into stability. Cao Cao, the ruler of the Wei state of the north, had a sizeable army ready at the time of the recession of the Han empire, and established himself and his loyalists as the new Wei dynasty.
Cao Cao was a bloodthirsty monarch who used trickery and deception to take down many of his competing heads of state, attempting to promote his emperor Xiandi to the throne. Xiandi gave up the throne in 220 AD, requesting Cao Cao's son, Cao Pei. Cao Cao was responsible for the renewed settling of the banks of the Yangtze and the restoration of much arable land that hand previously been destroyed in prior wars. He formed the state of Wei and raised a massive army that easily outnumbered the combined forces of Liu Bei and Sun Quan, and yet suffered an overwhelming and humiliating defeat at the Battle of Chibi (Red Cliffs) in 220 AD.
Liu Bei was a famous statesman and descendant of the Han Empire. He followed in his father's footsteps in trying to revive the glory of the Han Empire by establishing the State of Shu-Han (Han of the West), following its ordered split into states by the last Han emperor. Liu Bei relied heavily on the advice and assistance of Zhuge Liang, who was also known as Zhuge Kong Ming, or simply Kongming. Kongming was the orphaned descendant of an important statesman of China, and was driven out of his homeland as a young boy by Cao Cao's marauding armies. When offered the assistance of Liu Bei, Kongming's life once again had direction, and he proved himself to be a brilliant military strategist, employing many tactics and tricks that made the Trojan Horse look like child's play. He was later referred to as "The Hidden Dragon", the first in a long line of people who would wear that title, later being drawn upon by the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".
Sun Quan was the rising warlord of the Wu state, and the last remaining warlord to challenge the validity of Cao Cao's rule. Sun Quan had similar motives to Cao Cao, but refused to resort to the same measures Cao Cao had taken in order to accomplish his objectives. Sun Quan's father, Sun Jian, had been killed in battle against Liu Bei's father, Liu Biao. Sun Quan set aside his feud with Liu Bei to form an alliance and overthrow Cao Cao, but later resumed his quest for vengeance and killed Liu Bei, since Liu Bei's defeat also stood between him and the throne.
Dragon Throne chronicles the exploits of these three figures of history, and does so with very in-depth attention to detail. Unfortunately, it's that detail that sets it back in most of the other departments, and prevents this game from being just that - a game.
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